I don't see this as evidence that economists => inequality. Even if we accept the notion that economists are directly responsible for growing inequality, it's worth remembering that there are disagreements within their ranks.
I would argue this is when most economists lost influence in Washington, while a few like Art Laffer gained massive influence. The New Deal era prior to this was largely motivated by the work of noted economist John Maynard Keynes. Although the causality is debated, the New Deal was followed by recovery and economic growth. Economists gained influence in the public sphere because of the effectiveness, real or imagined, or "Keynesian" economic policy. These folks had lost sway in Washington by the early 70s due to the stagflation crisis[1] and the collapse of the "New Deal coalition" after the tumultuous 1968 presidential election.
The late 1970s was dominated by the ideas of economists like Art Laffer, who took an uncontroversial economic idea "tax revenue is maximized at some point between 0% and 100%" and turned it into "the tax revenue maximizing rate must be lower than our current rate" without presenting sufficient evidence for his claim. This was a convenient for some in Washington who already believed this to be true, and thus the "Laffer curve" was born. The following era of deregulation and lower taxes on the wealthy likely played a large role in increasing income inequality.
[1] The causes of stagflation are still debated, but I am convinced this was directly caused by the OPEC oil cartel using it's market power to quickly inflate the price of oil by 400%, creating a massive supply shock that started the stagflation spiral.
>I don't see this as evidence that economists => inequality. Even if we accept the notion that economists are directly responsible for growing inequality, it's worth remembering that there are disagreements within their ranks.
It's not "economists => inequality" it's neoliberal economists (almost all of them today) => inequality"
In the US, our democratic process has delegated all these roles to regulatory agencies that are staffed with economists. The FTC, FCC, Justice Dept., etc. all employ many PhD economists. Whether their bosses and the politicians listen to their recommendations is another matter.
Whether people are upset by price discrimination or not depends on how it is perceived. For example, no one seems upset at discounts for seniors, students, or military, despite this being a form of price discrimination.
To your second point, customers often do try to fool vendors into thinking they are in the consumer group that is offered lower prices. As an example, non-students use their old student IDs all the time.
Re: correlation with a legally protected class, this can be solved with marketing. Price discrimination based directly on gender would be illegal. But if you put one product in a blue box in the "men's" section and one in a pink box in the "women's" section, consumers will self-select. This is very common with razors, soap, and other such products.
Lastly regarding your edit, if a consumer pays his or her reservation price they are left with zero surplus. But that doesn't mean the transaction was pointless. The consumer gets the consumption value of the product. I'm willing to pay at most $2 for a bottle of Coke. That's my reservation price. If I'm offered a Coke for $2, and no vendor offering a lower price is available, I will pay that price and enjoy the Coke.
In order to make a trade, what you are getting must be more valuable to you than what you pay - isn't that axiomatic? If you are willing to trade $2 for a Coke, then the Coke must be worth more to you, and therefore it follows $2 is not your maximum price. Your maximum price is at least $2 + epsilon.
Since it is impossible to make a completely one-sided trade, one may ask how one-sided is acceptable, and if perhaps the optimal situation is where it is balanced in favor of the consumer...
> Intelligence is the capacity to achieve your goals. Intelligence is highly heritable. A goal of most people is to become wealthy. So people who acquire wealth tend to be much more intelligent than average, as wealth is graded on a curve
I've taught many MBAs and I can attest to their disappointing analytical skills. However, a company like Amazon already has plenty of analytically skilled employees. What they need from the MBAs are their management skills. I suspect Amazon is particularly targeting those MBAs who have experience with operations and supply chain management experience. At Amazon's scale, even a small reduction in costs is worth the cost of hiring all these MBAs.
I would take the other side of this. Not all MBAs have good analytical skills, but I have seen almost no non-technical non-MBAs have good analytical skills. They come with many other things, but if they lack a technical or business background, the odds that they could product a business model is very tiny.
I'd say that the MBA is a good predictor in the absence of a technical degree, but you still have to do a lot of screening post-MBA.
My impression when reading this was that the author intended it to be taken seriously. It is written with a decidedly "academic" tone. However, it is very light on actual research and evidence. Author says "Humans are inherently cooperative" is a bias on the Left. Where does this come from? More unsourced claims that strike me as suspect: "Respect for the strong/authority" is a bias on the Right. Women have more "Extraversion expressed as gregariousness rather than assertiveness. Also, higher agreeableness."
He uses a lot of the same terminology as the paper, references big-5 personality traits etc, as well as the same personality dimensions like people-object axis.
The left vs. right stuff is clearly coming from Jonathan Haidt's Moral foundations theory:
> Two charts and several hyperlinks are also omitted
The links that were removed are probably relevant. Some passages in the text even have quotation marks around them where I assume that links to sources were removed.
Yeah, what was up with that? I was really disappointed that stuff was omitted and assumed it was why some of the author's claims seemed so bold. Is there a link to something closer to the original around?
No, the research exists in some cases, but the content of an internal informal document obviously doesn't require a rigorous (redundant) academic format. If you can't Google, it probably wasn't intended for you anyway. The comment about women ranking higher (in general) for agreeableness is statistically true. However, the reasoning for why is up for debate and has been well considered...
Turns out when software engineers try to do psych and sociology research they don't tend to know what they are talking about. These are real fields with real expertise and the author of this thing thinks that he has figured it all out.
It seems to be saying that left bias is "people prefer to cooperation over pure self-interest/working on their own." Obviously sometimes cooperation is in your self-interest, but its the difference between thinking that employees will do what's best for the company and employees will do what's best for themselves. The right bias is that they are primarily self-interested while the left is that they see the groups interests as a priority.
No it's actually true, and everyone knew from the context I meant commerce monopolies in capitalist economies, such as Microsoft, IBM (in the early days of computers you apparently could get fired for writing a P.O. for a non-IBM machine), etc. Not talking about utilities. I meant commerce monopolies in a competitive market place, a monopoly that develops with 'network effects', 'switching costs', etc.
Here's all it takes for a monopoly to fail:
(switching costs become low enough) + (current monopoly has become a pain/overpriced/etc.) = get thee down satan and the monopoly is gone.
Friendster, Myspace lost their market as we all know. SO WILL FACEBOOK. There is no 'secret sauce' there, just network effects, and minor switching costs of transferring/losing the data you've put on your FB account.
Switching costs for desktop operating systems are dropping incrementally for obvious reasons.
Lloyds of London has been around a long time but that doesn't mean they're a monopoly.
I recently listened to an interesting discussion[1] about VR on a friend's recommendation. One of the guests had a great test for quality VR: can it perform as a hiking simulator? Can it mimic all the qualities of a good hike -- visuals, body movement, sounds?
It seems to me we're much closer to a great AR experience than truly great and immersive VR.
>> Can it mimic all the qualities of a good hike -- visuals, body movement, sounds?
I've got some VR hiking goggles to sell you. They are cheap, lightweight and totally wireless, but only work in the woods. They were featured on a recent SouthPark episode.
Too many discussions focus on VR being a drop-in replacement for reality. Nobody should expect them to mimic reality any more than they expect computer screens to mimic sunlight. I don't much care if VR helms don't allow me to jog up Everest. I just want to be free to look around as if I were standing on the top.
I think many people who are physically unable to take a hike (disabled, elderly, ill, etc.) would appreciate a VR system that can closely mimic a real hike.
Also, if a VR system can perform well as a hiking simulator it would be able to realistically simulate things that don't exist, places that are too difficult/expensive for an average person to visit, or experiences that are too dangerous to attempt in reality.
EDIT: For example, I'd love to visit the moon or Mars but it's highly unlikely I'll ever be able to physically go there. A highly immersive VR simulation would be very appealing to me!
But if they are disabled, then they in fact want the VR system not to emulate a hike. They cannot walk and so do not want a VR system that makes them walk. The OP was discussing a VR scheme that would mimic body movements akin to the physicality of actually hiking (ie VR on a treadmill).
Agreed. While I do think there are some interesting applications for building perfect reconstructions of reality, I think the most interesting experiences won't be in that direction.
I would argue this is when most economists lost influence in Washington, while a few like Art Laffer gained massive influence. The New Deal era prior to this was largely motivated by the work of noted economist John Maynard Keynes. Although the causality is debated, the New Deal was followed by recovery and economic growth. Economists gained influence in the public sphere because of the effectiveness, real or imagined, or "Keynesian" economic policy. These folks had lost sway in Washington by the early 70s due to the stagflation crisis[1] and the collapse of the "New Deal coalition" after the tumultuous 1968 presidential election.
The late 1970s was dominated by the ideas of economists like Art Laffer, who took an uncontroversial economic idea "tax revenue is maximized at some point between 0% and 100%" and turned it into "the tax revenue maximizing rate must be lower than our current rate" without presenting sufficient evidence for his claim. This was a convenient for some in Washington who already believed this to be true, and thus the "Laffer curve" was born. The following era of deregulation and lower taxes on the wealthy likely played a large role in increasing income inequality.
[1] The causes of stagflation are still debated, but I am convinced this was directly caused by the OPEC oil cartel using it's market power to quickly inflate the price of oil by 400%, creating a massive supply shock that started the stagflation spiral.